


Collide Without a Sound

by bocje_ce_ustu



Series: Spizzichi e Bocconi (Tumblr Writing, Fills and Flashfics) [7]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/F, Female Charles Xavier, Female Erik Lehnsherr, First Meetings, Gen, Genderbending, Genderswap, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Past Child Abuse, Past Torture, Pre-Femslash, Rule 63, Scars, X-Men: First Class (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-22 14:29:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13766124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: No one’s ever been able to stop Erika before, except for Schmidt. No one’s got even close.This one’s got too close without even needing to speak a word, and now that she’s decided to, she looks at Erika like she doesn’t have secrets for her.***a.k.a. their first meeting in a First Class genderbend!AU no one asked for but I wrote anyway.





	Collide Without a Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Sara Hartman's song _Monster Lead Me Home_.  
>  On Tumblr [here](http://bocje-ce-ustu.tumblr.com/post/170921036517/finally-ive-managed-to-kick-this-one-out-of-my).  
>  **Mind the tags.**

It all begins with a blazing, blinding rage. Rage at Schmidt getting away, at her powers not being strong enough, at the arms locking around her body and forcing her back to the surface.

Then comes serenity. She doesn’t recognize it at first, grasping desperately at the submarine propeller with every last ounce of fury she’s got, until even the last wisp of it slips through her fingers and she finds herself at the mercy of her survival instinct and of a warm voice slicing through her head as if it were butter.

And, in the middle of it all, the shock of revelation. She’s spent so many years believing she was one of a kind, and now in the space of minutes she’s found so many people like her. Different. Dangerous.

Sure enough, the stranger now gasping for air in front of her looks nothing like Erika, or Schmidt or his lackeys, but she stopped her. No one’s ever been able to stop Erika before, except for Schmidt. No one’s got even close.

This one’s got too close without even needing to speak a word, and now that she’s decided to, she looks at Erika like she doesn’t have secrets for her.

Erika perfectly remembers how having her head wrenched open and all of her agony poured beyond her eyelids feels like, and it doesn’t feel half as frightening as this. Every new word coming from Charlotte’s mouth is a hit accurately devised to chip away at her defences. Her armour was built to sustain violence, not kindness.

It doesn’t help in the least that Erika can’t look away, her thoughts derailing numbly from their usual course.

She gazes at Charlotte’s lips moving as she speaks and wonders if that outrageous rouge will come off, if it will smear around the lush circle of her mouth when rubbed or bitten the right way.

(It doesn’t, she discovers a few days later, in a deserted restroom at the end of a corridor in Langley. If anything else, it just gets redder and redder and Erika still can’t decide if that makes her more flustered or vexed. Probably both. Charlotte tends to have this kind of effect on her.)

They send a lifeboat for them, and as soon as Charlotte sets foot on deck she becomes the centre of a whirlwind of activity. A young man hurries to her with a blanket and a worried look on his handsome face, and receives a pat on his back and a carefree smile for his trouble. Erika mutters a thanks as a blanket gets thrown around her shoulders as well.

Charlotte exudes authority even with her hair clinging unevenly to her forehead, walking the deck with a hand clasped at her chest to keep the blanket closed around her. Erika keeps to herself as much as she can while the other mutant is talking to a man in a suit, who listens carefully and nods and looks over at Erika thoughtfully, which makes her instinctively clutch her blanket harder.

Once or twice Erika sees someone approaching her, only to walk past or turn midstride in another direction, and she almost sighs in relief. There’s bound to be questions, sooner or later, but she’s not sure she can make her way out of here easily with her head spinning and her legs threatening to give out under her any minute now.

When she hears steps next, there’s Charlotte standing in front of her. She has ditched the blanket in favour of carrying a pile of navy uniforms. “Agent MacTaggert handed me these, though I’m afraid we’ll have to make do for the underwear,” she explains with a wry smile. “There are showers on board, if you need one. I’m heading there now.”

Following her proves to be the sensible decision since no one even tries to approach Erika again as they make their way through the belly of the ship, sharing bits of their respective investigations as they walk.

At last Charlotte opens the door to a shower room – Erika tried to, when they were halfway down the corridor, but she only succeeded into weakly rattling the knob – and drops the pile of clothes on the bench beside the entrance.

Erika points questioningly at the spartan showerheads lining the far wall. “Do you…?”

Charlotte shrugs. “Go ahead.” The tone manages to be polite even through the chatter of teeth.

Erika nods and turns around. She’s not one to waste time in pleasantries.

She’s out of the wetsuit and under the spray before she even factors in the fact that Charlotte hasn’t left the room, and when she does, it takes more effort than she would care to admit not to glance over her shoulder to gauge her reaction.

She shrugs it off. Let her city girl eyes take her fill. A flush would surely look lovely on her pale, round face.

Not that she cares.

Her private smile is short-lived, lips quirking in surprise at the mixed rustle and squelch of wet clothes behind her back. When she does turn around, a dark pile is pooling around a conspicuous, circular void, and something sharp jabs into her ribs, shoving her aside. Charlotte looks at her, eyes electric in the halogen lamps, and holds out a hand. “Pass me the soap?”

 

***

 

The apparent unselfconsciousness with which Erika undresses and steps into the shower speaks volumes.

It’s that kind of self-taught body-mind dissociation Charlotte recognises easily, having honed it to perfection for years herself. Time to dust up the old tricks, then.

She reaches for the hem of her dress shirt beneath her blouse, wrenching them both over her head in a physical effort that mirrors all too well her mental one. Then again, who is proud of their scars in times of peace?

Her bra follows easily after that, after everything else is already out for everyone to see, plainly written on her back in capital letters in a language Erika won’t need to translate. She wriggles out of her suit pants, ditches tights and underwear in one go, and then steps forward keeping her eyes trained in front of her, trying to focus on the way Erika’s hair plasters to her back, spreading over her shoulder blades in inky tendrils like some dark creature dwelling in the depths of the ocean.

She briefly wonders how it would look under the sun. She caught glimpses, but they rarely contained something different from the face Charlotte is by now familiar with through countless CIA dossiers.

(Later she’ll notice how Erika’s hair falls in playful waves over her shoulders, she’ll thread her fingers through auburn locks on a lazy afternoon in the shade of the old oak, every other thought forgotten.)

In the few seconds it takes her to reach the showerhead Erika is using, her idea has lost most of its initial appeal. She has to keep her feet from straying towards one of the other showers. It would be so easy to do just that, but she can’t give up now that she’s halfway through.

So she steps on the sloping tiles and wonders about her next move. A nudge, maybe. A nudge usually works, she tells herself, except she’s nervous and her feet skid on the wet floor and her elbow hits Erika a bit too hard, startling her.

Fuck it, Charlotte thinks, plastering a brazen smile on her face, and asks for the soap. Erika gives her a puzzled look, but hands it over and rearranges herself behind her without a word.

For a while they just stay there shivering under the hot spray, both too tense and exhausted to come up with a better arrangement that would ensure the water warms more than a third of their bodies and doesn’t fall as much in the narrow space between them. It’s curious how – Charlotte reckons, stealing a glance at Erika’s forearm as she regulates the temperature – that’s not even the most intimate thing they’ve done today.

She feels the touch long before it comes, the need for it so keen in Erika’s mind that Charlotte has to brace herself against it. And yet, it is gentle, just a light brush on her forearm as Erika’s eyes keep boring into the pale jagged remnants of an X across her back.

She should have really expected Erika’s next words, but Charlotte won’t blame herself. They’ve been knowing each other for half an hour at best.

“The man who gave you these scars… you must want him dead.”

She can hear the accusation clinging to Erika’s words like moisture to the tiles.  _If you know what it means, why did you stop me?_

“How do you know it was a man?” Charlotte asks in lieu of an answer, revelling in the immediate spark of annoyance announcing the imminent scoff.

Right on cue, a gust of warm air comes to raise goosebumps on the nape of Charlotte’s neck.

“Isn’t it always?”

Many other words are fighting their way to her lips for the privilege of utterance, but Erika seems to be steeling herself from saying more.

“You can’t want a dead man any more dead than he already is,” Charlotte offers, and just as she speaks the words she realizes that that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Death hasn’t erased Kurt from existence. Nor deleted Cain or her mother’s bottles. When she closes her eyes they’re still there, all of them. She rubs at a pinkish spot on her arm. New bruise.

Erika doesn’t need to know that.

Water drops cut across the thin sheen of moisture covering the wall tiles.

There are bubbles popping up from the surface of Erika’s conscience nonetheless. Charlotte hates to burst them, and still, “Car accident. I was in Oxford at the time.”

“I wasn’t—”  _implying, yes. Except you were._  Charlotte keeps the thought to herself. She likes Erika better when she’s blunt. This she also keeps to herself.

“It’s not like someone could have pinned it on me,” she says instead, daring, only to regret it instantly. Shame burns her cheeks, though if it’s shame at her merciless quip or at the petty part of her still rejoicing in that sudden liberation is hard to tell.

She steps away from under the spray, bends to retrieve a towel from one of the closets.

Erika must have turned her way, because she feels all too intrigued, and not just by Charlotte’s words. The crystalline net of her mind muddles up, tangles darker and thicker in a few points, before unravelling once more in clear-cut purpose. Charlotte finds herself shivering for reasons that go beyond the drag of fabric against wet skin as she wraps the towel around her body.

“Will you show me someday?”

Charlotte realizes belatedly she’s just given Erika a reason to stick around. Just not the one Charlotte was hoping for.

“I didn’t think you’d stay.”

Erika smiles – a thin, hopeful, cruel smile. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

 


End file.
